Ryan Kwanten Is Adorably Befuddled by LARP in ‘The Knights of Badassdom’ Trailer

The publicity team behind the new LARP (Live-Action Role Playing) comedy-horror movie The Knights of Badassdom are a smart group: A few weeks after audiences got wind of this irreverent movie, they’ve released their first full-length trailer — at Comic-Con, no less, with stars Ryan Kwanten, Summer Glau, Peter Dinklage, and others on hand to tease more tidbits.

Yep, you read that right: True Blood hottie Kwanten is starring in a movie about nerds who go into the woods to hit each other with foam weapons. Not surprisingly, he plays the outsider to this culture, a heavy metal guitarist who’s learning the ropes of geekery. I don’t blame him; I’ve heard about and even seen some LARP in action for four years, and I still can’t keep track of the rules for costumes, weaponry, and battle.

But pretty soon, things go upside-down and into a realm that Kwanten’s character totally understands: Bitchy girls. Specifically, his ex-girlfriend Beth (Margarita Levieva) gets possessed by a succubus that his sorcerer-playing friend (Steve Zahn) conjures, and goes on a killing spree at the LARP. It’s a smart move to market this as a horror film, since the setting is perfect: A bunch of strangers alone in the woods for a weekend.

There are some pretty incredible moments in this trailer:

• Zahn and Kwanten shrieking in place of a spell
• “A pentacle? We don’t roll that way here — this is a LARP, not the Wicker Man Wiccan cosplay!”
• Dinklage’s scary laugh
• The acknowledgement that sometimes an empty field is just a field